The Bank of America - Megastructure at One Bryant Park

The Bank of America Tower is a 54 storeyed $1,000,000,000 megaproject currently under construction at One Bryant Park in New York City, USA. Designed by Ar. Richard Cook of Cook+Fox Architects, this green megastructure is New York's 2nd tallest and the 3rd tallest building of USA and is designed to be the most efficint and ecologically friendly buildings of the world. As its name indicates, Bank OfAmerica will be its anchor tenant.

The 54th storey of the building ends at 289mts, and a central spire runs all along the ht of the buildiing till 366 mts. Made basically of glass and steel, this building has 3 escalators, 53 lifts and yet claims to use only half the electricity as compared to other contemporary skyscrapers.

The building has employed various green technologies such as floor-to-ceiling insulating glass to restrict heat and maximize natural light, and an automatic daylight dimming system. The glass panels used in the facade has a light dotted pattern printed on them, invisible to naked eye from a distance, which restricts the infra-red heat radiations of sun while allowing visible light to enter, thus cutting daytime lighting expenses. Further, the building is designed in such a manner that no dark corners are left in it. The biggest problems of new york which rose with the rising skyscrapers is the increasing surface area of the city. With the construction of tall skyscrapers. the surface area of the city reciving sunlight also increases and hence the city temperature increases. When the day temp is 29 degrees in NY, the empire state building has a temp of 37 degs. Hence the air conditioning costs inc dramatically. But here, the building is recieves lesser amount of heat. Further, the building has a giant Air Filteration Plant at the 53rd floor. Air will enter the building only from the top and be cleaned of its impurities, half of which will be circulated in the building in a spiral manner, and rest will be ejected out for the city use, making the tower a giant air filter for Midtown Manhattan.

The building is made largely of recycled material. Care has been taken that almost all of the material is bought fom within a 80 km range to cut the material transportan costs. Further all the steel used here is recycled from scrap metal, which is molten and removed of its impurities and then casted into giant steel columns. Also the Bank of America tower is constructed using a concrete mix containing slag, a byproduct of steel blast furnaces. The mixture used in the tower concrete contains 55% cement and 45% slag. The use of slag cement reduces damage to the environment by decreasing the amount of cement needed for the building, which in turn lowers the amount of carbon dioxide (green house gas) produced through normal cement manufacturing, as well as imparts more strength to the concrete columns. The Bank Of America Tower alone prevented 53 milion tonnes of CO2 form ejecting out in the atmosphere.

The CO2 sensors present in the building will sense elevated amounts of CO2 in the building and alert the officials for necessary actions. Further, there are many terrace gardens and green gardens within the building itself which will serve as a meeting place for people as cafetarias and sitouts as well as purify the inner air of the building. The tower also features a greywater system, which captures every drop of rainwater and reuses it. There are giant water tanks in 4 intermediate floors and and a giant rainwater harvesting tank for this purpose. There are 54 giant water tanks, called ice batteries, 27 mts below the earth surface under the building which will use the night time earth's coolness to freeze its water. This ice in the daytime will be given to the AC systems and will result in effective nonelectric air conditioning. The tower also has a 4.6-megawatt cogeneration plant, which will provide a part of the base-load energy requirements. This onsite power generation reduces the significant electrical transmission losses that are typical of central power production plants.

Take another look at this building...

location of site :

(this last img had nothing to do with the site but i posted it because i found it really cute)

chrysler tower one bryant park empire state building

These days, its considered wise to spend more money on constructing green and to invest initially on green technologies. Spending initially on expensive treated glass and air ventilation and cooling systems increases the construction costs dramatically but makes the structure energy efficient for an entire lifetime.

Thus the owner in turn saves in the end. Also the govt. gives grants for these green const. The architect designed the building with the basic idea of reducing its operational costs by 50% and is successfull in doing so by inc the project const cost by 25%. In the end, the owner saves money, and the architect earns more name and more money... Of course, money is of prime intrest to most of us, isn't it...

This building is an architectural masterpiece, I couldn't think about a better place for this design that New York. I am looking forward to see the project finalized, New Yorkers will have another building to be proud of.

I am doing a research paper and have found some good articals about the Bank of America Tower but I am still looking for the actual USGBC rating numbers. How many points were received in each area, and what was the total points awarded in order to receive the plantinum rating?

am an architecture student and my project this semester is a tower of 70 floors that is supposed to include a bank within it...so this was very helpful,but i wonder if someone have any idea about what goes on inside the building? i mean what functions a bank can hold that requires this much of floors?

i am currently working on the project of bank of america tower, new york. unfortunately i couldn't find any relevant interior information and photos, can some one give some hints where i can find them?

The girls we're cute as well as the design of the building. I find it very futuristic since the design and the construction is very green. Bank of America is the nation's largest lending institution that's why I don't wonder that they have enough money for the construction of this building.

What a great architecture! I find this post very interesting. Let me share something about bankAmericard. Plenty of charge cards offer rewards to those who run up debt by spending more. The new BankAmericard Better Balance Rewards card, however, rewards users when the pay their bills promptly and when they pay more than their minimum necessary payment. Be very careful in choosing sources for this kind of transaction to avoid scam.

This is truly a piece of art. The Bank of America Tower produces a high level of sustainability within the commercial market place, creating a strong identity for itself and acting as an exemplary execution of sustainable technology integration, urban intensification, and advanced workplace design on the most broad levels. Feel free to visit https://personalmoneynetwork.com/.